


Missing

by orchidbreezefc



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-12-05 16:46:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11582130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orchidbreezefc/pseuds/orchidbreezefc
Summary: Everyone has something different to say about what Lucretia did. How could they not? She took everything from all of them--including herself.





	Missing

**Author's Note:**

> A gen fic! We all breathe a sigh of relief. What can I say, I listened to Kryptonite by 3 Doors Down (heavily recommended for Magnus+Lucretia feels) one too many times and then spat out 880 words in 30 minutes. Several days and a couple extra POVs later, here we are!
> 
> Set during/after/around ep. 67, the first episode of Story and Song. Please don't ruin this one too, Griffin. Or if you do, please make it as fucking awesome as the way you ruined my last fic.

Magnus  


You would have missed her terribly, had she allowed you to.

Even before you can so much as consider forgiving Lucretia, you have to mourn for all those years you spent not missing her. It's your right as a human being to be able to miss someone, isn't it? It's your right, as someone who cared so deeply for someone, to remember them and feel the weight of being apart so long.

You lost whatever happened to Julia. The edges around that are still torn and raw from it being ripped from you, and the part you can comprehend is that you will never get it back. You understand that it was a cruelty visited upon you by people who wanted to see you suffer, and this was their method of making you hurt.

So why, why in every plane of existence that is or was, _why_ did one of your closest friends do the same thing?

You just don't understand. Yes, you got her explanation, you heard everything that went through her head, you got her logic; always-logical, always-justifying Lucretia. What you don't understand is what _didn't_ go through her head--that you loved her, that all of you loved her so much. That you would have stood with her, that even if you disagreed, hell, you were still her fucking friends. That you, Magnus, had sworn to protect every one of them, that if Lup and Barry weren't supportive of her barrier idea that you would at least have gone with her to recover the Relics. That at no point did you want her to just be fucking alone.

You don't understand why she felt she had to go without you. You especially, even more than the others. Lup and Barry had alienated her, sure; Taako was always pretty closed-off; Davenport a little stiff maybe; Merle too wishy-washy at times; but you? You had supported her plan as much as it made sense to, and you and Lucretia had been each other's first real friends on the ship--even if that was long enough ago that it didn't matter to her anymore, it still matters to you. And you would have given your life for anyone on the ship had they asked for it. Surely she knew that.

You loved her dearly. And though you cannot forgive, may never forgive, you ache for all that time without her, and for all the time she spent alone. But you suppose all you can do now is make her see that she's not alone anymore. For better or worse, none of you are alone anymore.

Taako  


You wouldn't have missed her at all given what she did to you.

Lucretia can fuck off, honestly. No, fucking off's too good for her. You can't stress it enough: she took e v e r y t h i n g from you. You lost ten years of life without your sister, not even able to mourn. You even lost a year to fucking Sazed ruining what little you had and forcing you into obscurity, not to mention poverty. Your show was all you loved, all you had in the absence of Lup, so where the fuck was Lucretia to 'fix' all your problems for you then, whether you wanted her to or not?

Inoculated or not, you love Merle and Magnus. You really do. But if Lucretia thinks that you would have left your show to go with them by choice, she's even more fucking delusional than you thought.

And Lup? Lup is everything to you. You could have saved her ten years earlier. You could have worked out a body for her by now with Barry's necromancy pod. You could have been together all this time, and it's fucking Lucretia's fault that both of you spent ten years in crushing solitude.

If Lucretia wanted to stay off your shit list, she should never have gotten between you and Lup, not to mention the rest of your only friends in this or any world. It's unforgivable. You will hate her for the rest of your life, and that's all there is to say on the matter. You don't want to talk about it any more.

Merle  


You were already missing her before you even knew to.

Lucretia the Director was a lost soul, you could see that. A woman with a mission, sure, with a purpose. But that's not the same as being at peace. You could see her torment. That's why you tried to reach out to her in your time at the Bureau. You wanted to get to know her, to help her, this woman you didn't recognize, just because she was a fellow creature in pain.

Now that you know why she suffers, and how much of it was tied to you, it's hard not to feel for her even more. The others have no sympathy for her, and you understand why. But when you look at her you see nothing more than a lost woman, too young in truth to be forced to wear a brave mask in the face of this kind of suffering.

She did what she thought was right. That's all anyone can ask for, isn't it? She did it for the rest of you, after all. She did it because she saw your own pain and couldn't bear it anymore. And she did it for the people of this world--didn't you all swear to Lup that you would never sacrifice any civilization? All Lucretia did was try to live up to that promise.

It just breaks your heart that she put all this on herself, that she didn't take her plan to anyone else or leave herself open to ask for help. She could have even gone off like Lup did in the same mission to retrieve the Relics. Lup didn't ever come back, no, but she had _intended_ to; she didn't lock you all away like Lucretia did.

You wish she would have said something, anything at all. You would have understood. And she should have known you would understand. Did you not reach out to her enough? Did you not make it clear you cared for her like few people have the chance to care for each other, with all your heart and soul? Did she not _trust_ you?

In one hundred years you hardly ever heard a word expressing how she suffered. How you know she suffered, not just because you could see it, but because you were suffering the same way; all of you were. She hid her portraits from you, she hid her plans from you, she hid her soul from you. Why did she feel she had to do that?

Maybe it was how she martyred herself. Ever since the cycle of judgment, it was hammered into her head that she had to be self-sufficient to the point that she couldn't accept dependence on others anymore. Maybe it was the denial of the plan she poured decades into, because Lucretia has always dedicated herself so deeply to everything that even having a backup plan was intolerable, let alone being one. Maybe it was like she told you: that she was tired of waiting for someone else to solve her problems for her.

You try to understand what could have brought her to what she did, and you find that you can, more or less. You're not sure anyone else in the crew will make that same effort, but at least you have that: the fact that Lucretia can be understood, and even forgiven. Maybe someday everyone else will reach that point too, and you can be a family again. Maybe you can all make peace.

Lucretia  


You missed them all terribly, when you allowed yourself to.

It wasn't often, in the later days. For the first five years or so, the pain came whenever it wanted, and you had no way to protect yourself or escape. You would miss them every day. Gods, what you wouldn't have given to hear a joke from Taako, ask advice from Merle, or get a hug from Magnus.

Every few months you'd nearly give up and pack your bags to set out to find the three of them and bring them back to you. You would have them drink from Fisher and risk their reactions to what you had done just to be _free_ \--but then you would finally get a hold of yourself, unpack again, and stick with the plan.

The thing is, you didn't think it would be that long. A year, maybe. You knew how to track the Relics with arcana learned from Lup and Barry, but recovering them was a different story altogether. You barely escaped Wonderland with your life, even then sacrificing Cam and twenty years of your own life. It was a sobering realization; that articles of such power were bound to be kept by people just as powerful, and going after them alone was foolhardy at best and suicidal at worst.

Of course, then you had to deal with your newfound seniority, and that was its own torture--you had been the youngest of your crew of seven, and most of them saw you as a beloved baby sister, but now? You were being treated as an adult. You felt like an imposter in your own skin, tricking everyone into thinking you were a real grown-up, someone who knew what she was doing. Time finally had consequences for you, and you forbade yourself to simply reset the world and reclaim your youth, as tempting as it was some days.

The later five years, as things came together, you blockaded yourself from the feelings, the singular loneliness and the desperate longing. You didn't regret your decision so often. You kept your purpose in your head. Eventually you formed a Bureau. Even through all the failed attempts, you persisted, both because you had to save this world and because when you did you could all be together again. You never lost sight of that. You couldn't afford to.

But the past year and a half? Well. That was different. You put off recruiting Merle, Magnus, and Taako for as long as you could, through months of the truth being painfully obvious: that no one else could recover the Relics. You knew it would be too painful to have them around, living on the same base, not knowing who you were. Even so, you were wholly unprepared for what it was like once you finally admitted to yourself that you had no other choice and brought them in.

Instead of a baby sister, Magnus and Taako treated you like their mother, forgetting all the times they had playfully ruffled your hair. They and Merle respected you as an authority figure, in as much as the three of them ever respected anyone. You tried to keep a professional distance to save your heart, but their natural friendliness and compassion--you tell yourself it's that and not a subconscious sense of connection--made them pull you ever-closer.

They grew to care about you. They learned your name and started calling you Lucretia again instead of Madam Director, a title that had helped you remember your purpose. It hurt so much to see the same people you loved so dearly and know that if they really knew who you were--well, that was getting ahead of yourself. They'd have to forgive you first.

Which brings you to today: a day you thought would come later, and differently. Not much later, though; you had all the Relics. Victory was within your grasp. You would cast your barrier with the power of the entire Light of Creation and return the memories of your dearest friends, and everything you worked for would finally be yours. No more being torn apart inside watching wars wage over your own mistakes. No more running from the Hunger. No more being alone.

Selfishly, you had wished that when this day came they wouldn't hate you. You know now they do, and that's so much harder to bear than you thought it would be. You tell yourself that you did this for them, that gods, you had to do _something_ instead of letting them all hurt like they did by the time you took their memories. You were saving them from that, as much as you were saving the world from what you all had done, but you understand if they don't see it that way. You want to feel at peace with it. Maybe, someday, that will come. Or at least you will be able to blockade yourself from it again.

Until then, you must work. Your plan is not yet complete, and if you don't see it through to the end, then everything you did and sacrificed will have been for nothing. And that you simply cannot accept. You cannot bear to even think about the ramifications of losing all your work, five decades of spellcrafting and a decade more completely alone.

But your loneliness is unimportant now. You must defeat the Hunger, and then you will have time--not all the time in the world, not anymore, but time. Time to work things out.

You pray it will be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Check my TAZ blog [link: [here](https://the-thb-tbh.tumblr.com/)]! I sometimes make posts about Lucretia feels there too, haha.


End file.
